Introduction

The API requires a token sent on each request via the Authorization header to authenticate. This token can be obtained by making a POST request to the URI /auth/request-token where you would include your VSKEY credentials using the Authorization Header.

Request Access Token

This section shows how to request an access token using HTTPie and CURL.

Authentication tokens are valid for 24 hours (86,400 sec). After this period, a new token must be requested.

On this page:

HTTPie

http POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token -a <username>
http: password for <username>@vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca:

Response Headers

 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 179
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 11:52:47 GMT
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-RateLimit-Limit: 5
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 4
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1461930780

Response Body

{
    "duration": 86400, 
    "token": "<token_here>", 
    "user": "<username>",
	"valid_until": "2016-12-20 17:12:16 EST"
}

CURL

curl -X POST https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token -u <username>
Enter host password for user '<username>':

Response Headers

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 12:00:20 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 179
Connection: keep-alive
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 4
X-RateLimit-Limit: 5
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1461931230
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63072000
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Response Body

{
  "duration": 86400, 
  "token": "<token_here>", 
  "user": "<username>",
  "valid_until": "<timestamp>"
}⏎

Unauthorized

Getting a 401 Unauthorized error as shown below when requesting a new access token, could be due to the following reasons:

Response

HTTP/1.1 401 UNAUTHORIZED

Username and password combination is not valid

Re-initializing your VSKEY credentials is strongly advised. To do so, please follow this KB Article.

Response

HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Content-Length: 115
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 13:55:25 GMT

{
    "error": "authentication error", 
    "message": "Invalid username and password combination.", 
    "status": 401
}

User is not permitted to access the API

Contacting the VSS Team to request access is advised by email or our contact form.

Response

HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Content-Length: 106
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 13:55:51 GMT

{
    "error": "authentication error", 
    "message": "User is not authorized to access.", 
    "status": 401
}

Using Access Token

At this point you have already generated an access token to use the API valid for a certain period of time. Now, this token can be used for every request made to a given API endpoint via GET, POST, PUT, PATCH.

There are two separate approaches to authenticate using OAuth: Bearer Authorization Header and Basic Authentication described in the following sections:

Bearer Authorization Header

The first approach is sending a bearer authorization header within your request, which will authorize the request from the header section. The following examples illustrate how to pass the Authorization header with CURL and HTTPie

http GET https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2 "Authorization: Bearer $VSS_API_TOKEN"
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer $TK" https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2

Basic Authentication

The second approach is using basic authentication as shown below:

http GET https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2 -a $TK:
curl -X GET https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/v2 -u $TK:

Look closely at the colon appended to the token environment variable.

Unauthorized

Getting a 401 Unauthorized error as shown below when using an access token, could be due to the following reasons:

Expired Token

Generate a new token as previously described /auth/request-token

Response

HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Allow: HEAD, OPTIONS, GET
Content-Length: 103
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 14:19:39 GMT
Location: https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token

{
    "error": "authentication error", 
    "message": "Valid token, but has expired. ", 
    "status": 401
}

Invalid Token

Either a typo or something at our end went wrong. Just generate a new access token at /auth/request-token

Response

HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Allow: HEAD, OPTIONS, GET
Content-Length: 103
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 14:19:39 GMT
Location: https://vss-api.eis.utoronto.ca/auth/request-token

{
    "error": "authentication error", 
    "message": "Invalid token.", 
    "status": 401
}

User is no longer authorized to access the API

Contacting the VSS Team to request or restore access is advised by email or our contact form.

Response

HTTP/1.0 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Allow: POST, OPTIONS
Content-Length: 106
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 13:55:51 GMT

{
    "error": "authentication error", 
    "message": "User is not authorized to access.", 
    "status": 401
}